Eroding Self-Importance & Our Healthy Doubt

At one level we need to believe in what we are doing in order to even get the momentum to get up and running. If there is not a sense of import and/or urgency to our actions then they probably never even get off the ground, i.e., they remain just dreams, imaginings, wishful thoughts and thinking.

At the same time, our sense of self-importance relative to whatever we are involved in must go through periods of intense doubt and self-scrutiny in order to remain authentic. The healthy doubt and that necessary erosion of self-importance relative to our work can serve to keep us in a state of penetrating inquiry as to whether or not we are really whole-heartedly invested in what we say we are... or pretend to be.

For instance, when we are feeling doubt around a particular area of personal investment--a relationship, a career, a hobby, a vocation, a sense of duty and calling--we may need to bring an abrupt end to such a pursuit--its time may have come. Or, we just may need to re-evaluate the whole situation and adjust ourselves in some way so as to better actualize our capacities in synchrony with external conditions and circumstances.

Doubt, in such a sense, is really a necessary growth factor in all of our pursuits. I suggest that doubt is what we need to become more comfortable with because it keeps us honest with others as well as with our self--not to mention our work. Doubt is like the sense that we can do more; the sense that our time may be better spent; the sense that our calling has shifted; the sense that an old road, well-traveled is reaching its end; the sense that our spiritual practice needs to shift into another realm. It is as if doubt is 'hidden potential' within us forcing us to question what we are currently involved in because there is something yet waiting in us to be born, to emerge, to flower and grow, unfold and unfurl. Doubt today is the seed of tomorrow's hope.

But only if we entertain that doubt. Only if we walk with it. Only if we have a conversation with doubt. Then tomorrow's hope reveals itself, in the face of doubt.